History of Speedway Motors - Six Decades Of Speed

1/16A typical day at the Speedway Motors parts counter in the mid-’60s. That’s “Speedy”Bill Smith behind the counter (looking at the camera), working alongside his wife, Joyce.

The word “tradition” gets tossed around pretty frequently in hot rodding these days. There’s a lot of conversation about “traditional” cars and “nostalgic” parts and accessories. That’s a good thing—it’s important to know the roots from which hot rodding grew. But how many people—or companies—have truly been around long enough to remember when all this “traditional” stuff was new?

2/16Bill Smith’s entrepreneurial spirit started early. Here he is at age 14, in a Model T roadster pickup promoting his hauling services. Bill bought, fixed, and sold dozens of Model Ts to earn money before he had even earned his driver’s license.

Speedway Motors is one of a small handful of businesses that can rightfully claim it has grown up along with the hot rodding industry. Founded in 1952, the company is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Sixty years! That’s a pretty long stretch in anyone’s book. Not only that, but company founder “Speedy” Bill Smith is still at the helm. How many businesses do you know that have been around for six decades, much less under the same leadership?

It seems fitting to mark this milestone by looking back at the rich history of America’s oldest speed shop. Speedway Motors may be well known as a mail-order powerhouse today, but its roots are as humble as those of hot rodding itself, sprouting from a single man’s passion for automotive performance.

Beginnings

3/16Bill Smith’s entrepreneurial spirit started early. Here he is at age 14, in a Model T roadster pickup promoting his hauling services. Bill bought, fixed, and sold dozens of Model Ts to earn money before he had even earned his driver’s license.

The history of Speedway Motors is directly tied to that of its founder, William “Speedy Bill” Smith. Born in 1929 in Lincoln, Nebraska, Bill gravitated toward all things mechanical, encouraged in part by a neighborhood tinkerer and mentor named Milo Caslasky. At age 12, Bill built himself a makeshift go-kart using cast-off parts from a Maytag washing machine and wheels from a baby buggy, and was summarily ushered off the street by local law enforcement. By 14, Bill had bought his first “real” car—a Model T purchased from Caslasky—and began buying, fixing, and re-selling other Model Ts to earn spending money. It seems the only thing that matched Bill’s mechanical interest was his entrepreneurial spirit.

Another thing that made a strong impression on Bill as a teen was the roar of Midget racing cars from the local dirt track, Landis Field. Bill badgered his father into taking him to the races, and was soon hooked on the sights and sounds of this magical world of speed and dust. “I remember thinking it was the greatest thing that ever was,” Bill later recalled.

Bill earned enough money to buy his own BSA motorcycle by the time he was in high school, and even made a few bucks racing two-wheelers on local dirt flat tracks. By 1949, he graduated to racing “roaring roadsters,” unbeknownst to his protective mother. “I liked racing a lot,” Bill says, “but the idea of getting hurt was on my mind. I wasn’t afraid of an injury; I could deal with that because I wanted so badly to race. But it was the idea of how my mother would react that was on my mind.” After beating up his roadster by driving through a fence during a race in Hastings, Nebraska, Bill hung up his helmet as a driver, focusing instead on building winning race cars and hiring the best drivers he could find.

In those early days, racing and hot rodding were more closely linked than they are today, and Bill can still recall the local boulevard scene from the late ’40s and early ’50s. Bill’s parents lived on O Street, Lincoln’s main drag, giving him a front row seat for the action on the street. Some of the prime gathering spots for local rodders were close by.

4/16Bill’s racing career started with flat-track motorcycles in high school. He spent some time in roadster cockpits like this, too, before hanging up his helmet to focus on building winning cars and teams.

“It was Elmer’s Conoco station where our car scene was really happening,” Bill recalls. “Guys standing around talking, hoods up on their cars, crawling all over each other’s machines, studying what they were doing, getting ideas. There was no television, and very few magazines; it was all about studying other’s cars, particularly somebody from out of town who might have something new to us.”

There was plenty of rodding interest in Lincoln, thanks in part to the enlisted men at the local air base. But the resources to feed the burgeoning hot rod movement were limited in this farm-belt community. Enthusiasts had to be creative and resourceful in their pursuit of performance.

“It was amazing the lengths we’d go to get something we wanted for our car,” Bill says. “For example, one day I heard a set of Smithy’s mufflers, and I was absolutely enthralled. What was that sound? It was fantastic! Of course, I wanted a set for my ’40 Ford coupe; unfortunately, the nearest set I could find was in Denver. No problem. I simply drove from Lincoln to Denver—about 500 miles each way—just to buy a set of Smithy’s mufflers. That’s amazing when you think about it. But I did what I had to do, in order to get what I wanted for my car.”

5/16This ’40 Ford coupe was one of Bill’s many hopped-up street rods. He drove it to Denver and back (1,000 miles round trip) just to buy a set of Smithy’s mufflers.

Episodes like this likely planted the seed for what would become Bill’s greatest adventure and undertaking.

Speed For Sale

In 1952, Bill Smith was completing his Industrial Education degree at Nebraska Wesleyan University and was engaged to his college sweetheart, Joyce. He was also buying and selling used cars, campaigning race cars, and hopping-up hot rods for his buddies on the side. As graduation day approached, he had some decisions to make. “I was 23 years old and my life was at a crossroads,” Bill says. “I had been involved in racing in some form since I was 16, and had progressed to the role of car owner. My car had earned about $4,500 the previous summer, with the driver getting 40 percent. Plus, I had made a few bucks with my car business.”

6/16Speedway Motors had its modest beginnings in this small storefront on O Street in Lincoln. Bill’s local customer base was quite limited. “There were probably more cows and pigs in a 200-mile radius of Lincoln than there were people,” Bill says. “You aren’t going to sell exhaust systems and shifters to cows and pigs.”

Considering his success in automotive endeavors, the teaching offer Bill received with a $2,750 annual salary seemed unappealing. He also couldn’t shake an idea he’d hatched about opening up a speed shop to sell and install performance parts. Bill wondered whether such a business would work in Lincoln. “Yes, the hot rod hobby was starting to take off, but it was still a very limited market. But I had the idea and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Bill decided to give his dream a chance. With a $300 loan from his fiancée, Joyce, he opened Speedway Motors in a 400-square-foot building located at 2232 O Street in Lincoln.

Business was a struggle in those early years. Not only was the customer base very limited, but it was also difficult to forge relationships with the fledgling automotive aftermarket manufacturers, most of which were far away and sold direct to consumers. Bill survived by doing anything he could to make a buck, from selling tire chains to installing parts that customers had purchased elsewhere. He also learned a few tricks to make his small shop seem a little bit bigger.

7/16Bob McKee built a Pontiac Grand National Stock Car at Speedway Motors for Tiny Lund to drive at the Daytona Beach races in 1956. This was a car that Lund bought new and was still making payments on when it was converted for racing duty. The team saw limited success in 1956, but Lund went on to win the Daytona 500 in 1963, racing for the Wood Brothers.

“Whenever I got a new part in, I’d put the part in the window and put the empty box up on the shelf, making it look like I had two of them,” Bill says. “I wanted to create the image that I had things in stock.”

Racing Toward Growth

Bill’s unwavering determination and effort earned Speedway Motors enough business to expand in 1954. The company moved a few blocks to a 5,000-square-foot facility at 1719 N Street, allowing more space for service that included specialty engine work, engine swaps, and header and dual exhaust installations.

In addition to the day-to-day parts business, Bill’s racing endeavors helped keep the Speedway Motors name out in front of racers and the public. His purple 4x Sprint Cars were familiar sights on area dirt tracks and were regular winners with drivers like Lloyd Beckman at the wheel. Bill also campaigned successful drag cars, and even dabbled in the up-and-coming NASCAR circuit, most notably with a ’56 Pontiac built by employee Bob McKee and driven by future NASCAR Hall of Famer DeWayne “Tiny” Lund.

Racing not only kept the Speedway name out there, it also gave Bill a chance to market to racers in an expanding region. “I was really getting outside my circle, and that proved to be very helpful,” Bill says. “I’d go to Kansas, Colorado, Indiana, or Florida and meet various people. They figured out I was in the performance business, and they’d say, ‘Are you carrying those new wheels?’ ‘Have you got a header kit with flanges and bolts?’ ‘Do you have gears for my quick-change rearend?’ ‘I busted my ring-and-pinion tonight, can you guys ship me a new set?’ I’d smile and tell ’em what they wanted to hear: ‘Sure, I can do that.’”

8/16Bill competed in all forms of racing as a car owner and builder, including drag racing, NASCAR, Pike’s Peak, Bonneville, the American IndyCar Series, USAC, Champ Cars, IMCA, and the World of Outlaws. This ’32 Ford sedan Supermodified became a local legend with Lloyd Beckman (right) at the wheel, winning an unprecedented 16 features in a row at Lincoln’s Capitol Beach Speedway in the early ’60s.

Bill began having Joyce type up price sheets to take to the races, and by the early ’60s they were printing a catalog to promote the mail-order side of the business. Bill was also advertising in national magazines like Hot Rod and learning how to reliably ship parts to customers he might never meet in person.

“In the ’60s, there was no UPS service in Lincoln, or in the center of the United States,” Bill says. “I tried Parcel Post from the U.S. Postal Service, but they weren’t very dependable at that time, so I had to figure out another way. I began using Greyhound and Continental bus to ship a lot of orders. Both companies gave us overnight service within a 500-mile radius, and they stopped at every small town in the country. We knew their schedules, and if we could get the order on the bus in the late afternoon, the customer would have it in the morning. Every evening you’d see me driving to the bus station in my pickup truck, loaded with packages and bus freight bills.”

Fiberglass And Kookie Ts

9/16Speedway Motors capitalized on the “Kookie Kar” craze with fiberglass T-bucket bodies and purpose-built frames, creating some of the industry’s first kit rod packages. This T roadster was used at area shows for promotion. Speedway reached a wider audience with print ads in national magazines.

Shortly after opening Speedway Motors, Bill began experimenting with fiberglass as a means for building lightweight race car bodies. He worked with a local fiberglass manufacturer to produce a ’glass ’27 Model T roadster body in 1953. It didn’t take long for drag racers to see the benefit of these lightweight bodies, and Speedway Motors was soon offering ’32 Bantam bodies and other models popular in Altered classes.

Speedway Motors opened its own fiberglass manufacturing facility in 1962. By this time, the “Kookie Kar” T-bucket craze was in full swing, popularized by Norm Grabowski’s roadster on the TV show 77 Sunset Strip. Speedway Motors was able to capitalize on the trend by building fiberglass ’23 T roadster bodies, which were paired with purpose-built frames. These became some of the first body-and-frame kit packages in the street rod market and paved the way for a completely new branch of the hot rod industry.

Since producing those first T-bucket kits, Speedway Motors has developed hundreds of different fiberglass street rod bodies, parts, and kits that have helped thousands of rodders craft their dream cars. By offering affordable, easy-to-build kits, like the T-bucket, Track T, and ’32 LoBoy, Speedway has helped keep street rodding affordable and accessible for entry-level enthusiasts.

Balancing Two Worlds

10/16Speedway Motors capitalized on the “Kookie Kar” craze with fiberglass T-bucket bodies and purpose-built frames, creating some of the industry’s first kit rod packages. This T roadster was used at area shows for promotion. Speedway reached a wider audience with print ads in national magazines.

In the decades following those early days, Speedway Motors enjoyed steady growth by focusing on the two things that drew Bill Smith to the business in the first place: racing and hot rodding.

On the racetrack, Speedway Motors hit a winning pace in the ’70s as a string of legendary drivers slid into the cockpits of the company’s 4x Sprint Cars. One of the best was Jan Opperman, one of the original “Outlaws” who outran 56 of the country’s top USAC Sprint teams on his way to victory in the 1976 Hulman Classic “The Race that Changed the World.” Two years later another standout, Doug Wolfgang, ran the number 4x Sprinter to 26 feature wins from coast to coast, with a highlight victory at the 1978 Knoxville Nationals—the Indy 500 of open-wheel dirt track racing.

Speedway’s racing efforts extended beyond the dirt track. In 1989, two of Bill and Joyce’s four sons, Carson and Jason, teamed up to capture the American IndyCar Series championship with a Lola-Chevrolet driven by Robby Unser. Unser also piloted Speedway entries in the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb in the ’90s, bringing home class wins in 1991 and 1992, and setting an Open Wheel Class record in 1994 that still stands today. On flatter ground, the Speedway-sponsored Bonneville streamliner, built by John MacKichan and driven by Tim Schulz, set a 326.17-mph record in 1990, powered by a single small-block Chevy V-8.

11/16Speedway Motors’ racing efforts hit a winning pace in the ’70s as a string of legendary drivers slid into the cockpits of the company-built and -sponsored 4x Sprint Cars. One of the best was Jan Opperman, one of the original “Outlaws” who charged to victory in the 1976 Hulman Classic “The Race that Changed the World”.

Street rodding enjoyed new life in the ’70s and ’80s as well. Speedway Motors was in the thick of it, attending the first-ever Street Rod Nationals in 1970, and every NSRA Nationals since. Speedway expanded its street rod product offering in the early ’80s by purchasing the Mr. Roadster brand of parts, and continued to develop new and innovative products for the street market. The “kit rod” concept, first developed with T-buckets decades earlier, hit a new pace, with Speedway’s LoBoy ’32 roadster kit being used as a project vehicle for Hot Rod in 1985, and again as a buildup series in STREET RODDER in the late ’90s.

Speedway’s continued growth meant a move to a larger facility in the late ’70s, and another move to its current 500,000-square-foot warehouse in 2000. Along the way, Bill and Joyce somehow found time to organize their extensive collection of vintage engines, cars, parts, and toys into a formal display. The Smith Collection Museum of American Speed, a world-class, federally recognized 501(c)(3) museum, first opened in 1992. A decade later, it moved to its current location on the Speedway Motors corporate campus, growing to 135,000 square feet over three levels (and soon to expand again).

12/16Speedway Motors began offering a print catalog in the early ’60s to help reach a wider base of potential customers. The catalog quickly became a vital marketing tool for Speedway Motors—and a bible for many enthusiasts.

“Assembling the collection was never about money, or winning the ‘big dog’ contest,” Bill says. “It’s always been about doing the right thing, and giving back to the world. That’s far more important than money. These physical examples of the past help us move forward to the future.”

Never Let Up

You might have expected Bill to let off the throttle a little after Speedway Motors celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2002. Quite the opposite; it’s been full speed ahead for the past decade. With his wife and partner, Joyce, at his side, and the couple’s four sons—Carson, Craig, Clay, and Jason—on board as part of the management team, Speedway Motors has continued to grow and expand in the new millennium.

Speedway expanded its manufacturing capabilities and product selection in 2008 through the acquisition of the Indiana-based A-FAB Corporation, which manufactures AFCO performance shocks, springs, and radiators and the Dynatech brand of performance headers and exhaust components. In early 2009, Speedway acquired Total Performance, bringing new life to its popular line of T-bucket kits and products. The Speedway Motors–sponsored Streamliner had one last hurrah on the salt in 2010, setting a D/FS land speed record of 323.3 mph during the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association World of Speed meet at Bonneville. And last year, Speedway Motors put a new big rig on the road, traveling to more than 20 events coast to coast to showcase the company’s latest products to enthusiasts.

13/16Like many hot rodders, Bill is a collector. For decades he acquired used and vintage speed parts, engines, race cars, and memorabilia as he traveled across the country and around the globe attending races, swap meets, rod runs, and auctions. This assortment of artifacts has been formally organized into the Smith Collection Museum of American Speed, a federally approved 501(c)(3) museum with the goal of preserving rodding and racing heritage for future generations. The museum occupies a three-story facility on the Speedway corporate campus and is undergoing expansion this year.

As Speedway Motors races into its 60th year, there are even fewer signs of slowing down. They are continually developing innovative new products for racing and rodding, and finding better ways to serve its loyal customers. “Speedy” Bill Smith can still be found in his office every day, overseeing a team of more than 300 employees. It’s a great example of the strong work ethic that permeates the company, one that is summed up in one of Bill’s favorite quotes: “The smart guy will outsmart himself. The lucky guy will run out of luck. The money guy will never have the desire. But hard work will take you anywhere you want to go.”